Taking the party chief Chandrababu Naidus frequent rebukes lightly, half of the party MPs skipped the parliamentary party meeting held at Tenali on Sunday.Curiously, the meeting was chaired by Naidu himself.

Amidst speculation that general elections maybe advanced, the party chief summoned the TDP meeting to finalise the strategy for the Parliament budget sessions slated to begin next week.TDP has 11 members in both the Houses of which five abstained from Sunday's meeting.

Although, the party leaders explained that the absentee MPs took the permission from the party supremo, analysts observed that it reflected on the weakness of the party leadership.In fact, three TDP MPs had created a flutter when they skipped the crucial voting on FDI in the Rajya Sabha only last December.

Naidu exonerating the MPs, who deliberately skipped the voting on FDI in the parliament, seems to have given courage to even the first-time MPs to skip such an important meeting.Such lack of seriousness from both the sides is not doing any good to the party, that too at a time when several leaders were deserting the party, remarked a senior leader present at the meeting.

He found fault with Naidu for not inculcating seriousness among such leaders in spite of taking up the padayatra facing all odds. At least two legislators and several key leaders from north-coastal joined the YSR Congress Party two days ago and many others are planning to meet Jagan in prison in next few weeks.

In fact, Naidu himself had scolded the party leaders stating that it was not easy to regain the lost power in the state with just his hard work and asked them to reach out to the people on the lines of his padayatra.

Meanwhile,TDP leader Nama Nageswara Rao and party leader in upper House Devender Goud told the media after the hour long session that they would raise the issues of chopper deal,rising prices and insufficient allocations to the state by the railway ministry in the next session.

They demanded a probe into the role of brother Anil Kumar in the Agusta deal in the state.MPs Kanakalla Narayana,Ramesh Rathod,CM Ramesh and N Sivaprasad attended the meeting.